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Juǀʼhoan phonology
Vowels * /a/ is realized as ə before /i/. * The diphthong /oa/ may be realized as wa. Juǀʼhoan has four tones and five vowel qualities, which may be nasalized, glottalized, murmured, or combinations of these, and most of these possibilities occur both long and short. The qualities and may also be pharyngealized and strident (epiglottalized). Thus, there are a good 30 vowel phonemes, perhaps more, depending on one's analysis. There are, in addition, many vowel sequences and diphthongs. Consonants Juǀʼhoan has an unusually large number of consonants, as typical for !Kung. The following occur at the beginnings of roots. For brevity, only the alveolar clicks are listed with the other consonants; the complete set of clicks is found below. } || || || || || || |-align=center ! prevoiced uvularized | || || || || || || |-align=center ! uvular-ejected | || || || || || || |-align=center !prevoiced uvular-ejected | colspan=4| || || || |-align=center bgcolor="#ccccff" ! rowspan=2 | Fricative !voiced | || colspan=2| || || || || |-align=center bgcolor="#ccccff" ! voiceless | || colspan=2| || || || || |} Tenuis and modally voiced consonants (blue) may occur with any vowel quality. However, other consonants (grey, transcribed with a superscript diacritic to their right) do not occur in the same root as murmured, glottalized, or epiglottalized vowels. The prevoiced aspirated and ejective consonants, both pulmonic and clicks, contain a voiceless interval, which Miller (2003) attributes to a larger glottal opening than is found in Hindustani breathy-voiced consonants. Phonetically, however, they are voice contours, starting out voiced but becoming voiceless for the aspiration or ejection. The phonemic status of and is uncertain. may be epenthetic before vowel-initial words; alternatively, it may be that no word may begin with a vowel. occurs only in a single morpheme, the plural diminutive enclitic . and (not shown) only occur in loan words, and some accounts posit a and . Labials ( ) are very rare initially, though is common between vowels. Velar stops (oral and nasal) are rare initially and very rare medially. The uvulo-ejective consonants are analyzed as epiglottalized in Miller-Ockhuizen (2003). They have uvular frication and glottalization, and are similar to consonants in Nǀu described as uvular ejective by Miller et al. (2009). Their epiglottal character may be a phonetic consequence of the raised larynx involved in making them ejective. Only a small set of consonants occur between vowels within roots. These are: Medial (green) are very common; are rare, and the other medial consonants occur in only a very few roots, many of them loans. are generally analyzed as allophones of . However, especially may correspond to multiple root-initial consonants. Juǀʼhoan has 48 click consonants. There are four click "types": dental, lateral, alveolar, and palatal, each of which found in twelve series or "accompaniments" (combinations of manner, phonation, and contour). These are perfectly normal consonants in Juǀʼhoan, and indeed are preferred over non-clicks in word-initial position. As above, tenuis and modally voiced consonants (blue) may occur with any vowel quality. However, other consonants (grey, transcribed with a superscript diacritic to their right) do not occur in the same root as murmured, glottalized, or epiglottalized vowels. Glottalized clicks occur almost exclusively before nasal vowels. This suggests they are nasalized, as in most if not all other languages with glottalized clicks. The nasalization would not be audible during the click itself due to the glottalization, which would prevent any nasal airflow, but the velum would be lowered, potentially nasalizing adjacent vowels. The 'uvularized' clicks are actually linguo-pulmonic contours, , etc. The 'uvulo-ejective' clicks are heterorganic affricates, and equivalent to linguo-glottalic consonants transcribed , etc., in other languages (Miller 2011). See Ekoka !Kung for a related variety with a somewhat larger click inventory. External links * Category:Language phonologies